All that glitters is not Gold Bar

The front page of Sunday’s Everett Herald featured a story about the Snohomish County town of Gold Bar, and how it is struggling to stay incorporated in the aftermath of tax-cutting initiatives. [Cash-strapped town could fall off the map]

The reason Gold Bar and numerous other cities around the state are struggling financially can be traced to the passage of the car tab initiative in 1999, which lowered licensing fees to a flat $30 rate. Since then, Gold Bar has lost about $707,000 in revenue, according to the Association of Washington Cities. That loss is bigger than the city’s 2005 general fund of about $508,000. The city already has tightened its belt, cutting expenses on staff training, laying off staff and restructuring the police service contract with the county, which has saved the city about $194,000, said Hester Gilleland, the city’s clerk and treasurer.

Gold Bar Mayor Collen Hawkins realistically acknowledges that the deepening financial crisis could force the town to disincorporate, forcing Snohomish County to take over services. Residents would lose local control of local services, while facing uncertainty over who would run the local water system, which counties are simply not set up to do.

And they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.

Hawkins said she finds it ironic that even she voted for Initiative 695 – the major cause of the city’s financial headaches.

The town’s registered voters supported the initiative by a vote of 354-138. Courts eventually struck down the measure, but state lawmakers heeded the will of the people and adopted $30 license tab fees anyway. … In 2002, voters approved a second car-tab initiative, which eliminated a $15 license registration fee that Snohomish County and several other counties had been charging. That money was earmarked for street repairs. As a result, the street fund in Gold Bar dropped from $17,200 in 2002 to nothing in 2004, Gilleland said.

“Even though these initiatives are appealing, they are giving a death warrant for local government,” Hawkins said.

Some might argue that these are the unintended consequences of ill-conceived initiatives like I-695, but I’d say it was intentional. While many voters — and even some mayors — didn’t realize the local impact of these statewide measures, many of their strongest and most vocal proponents knew exactly what they were doing.

We are witnessing the gradual devolution of state and local governments. Small towns across the state will be forced to disincorporate as tax revenues continue to dry up, possibly pushing some Eastern Washington counties into insolvency as they struggle to provide additional services.

Meanwhile, the structural deficit built into our antiquated state tax system has created a cycle of perpetual, multi-billion dollar budget gaps that makes it impossible for Olympia to lessen the blow, or assume more of the burden itself. When Republicans talk about cutting government waste, they’re no longer talking about making government more efficient, they’re talking about cutting programs entirely. They’re not interested in convincing the public to embrace a dramatically smaller and limited form of government… they know that if they just sit back and patiently defend the status quo, they will achieve this vision, with or without public support.

It is time for the Republican leadership to come clean about its agenda. If they don’t believe in shuttering city halls across the state, if they don’t believe in denying health care to tens of thousands of children, if they don’t believe in mediocre public schools and a university system that can’t possibly grow to meet the needs our rising population… then they need to tell us how they intend to pay for these and other basic services without raising taxes. But if what they truly believe in is minimal government and zero regulation, then they need to let voters decide on this agenda for themselves, instead of dishonestly relying on our broken tax structure to enact it by default.

I’m a Democrat. Bashing the ‘Pubs isn’t the answer. We – the Democrats – control the State Legislature and the Governorship. We are the majority party. We have two Democrat Senators in DC. If we want an income tax, we have to propose it and pass it into law. The Republicans are irrelevant.

So, the real question is – why isn’t tax reform the number one thing on our agenda in 2005 in the State House?

Goldy– I have spent many years dealing with municipal finance. The “fixed costs” of having small towns incorporated is dramatic as incorporation REQUIRES certain legal structure and overhead. Frankly, it’s becoming more and more difficult to justify “duplicate” bureaucracies in small city and County government. I mean it is nice to have their own Police Dept., Fire Dept., Building Dept., Finance Dept., Libraries, Public Works Depts., City Clerk, City Manager, City Attorney along with related support staff and overhead. It’s especially nice for folks that have those jobs! However, as far as looking at a duplicate bureaucracy in terms of cost/benefit analysis…hard to justify.

Washington State is WAY behind the curve in consolidating School Districts, City/County government, Transit systems, Fire Districts, Police/Sheriff’s Dept. etc. The BUREAUCRATS are the ones that undermine every effort to accomplish these consolidations. NOW is the time.

Isn’t there a point where too much consolidation is the problem? I think I remembering you arguing that King County should be split so the people could have more control over their elected officials?

Which is it? Should we, as a state, have large electoral districts, consolidated school districts, and large bureaucracies, or should we champion local control, and smaller bureaucracies? I admit there are advantages to both positions, but we should be consistent in what goals we prioritize.

The Republican agenda is to force government to go away. Period. It’s not about goverment spending money foolishly or haphazardly. It’s about government spending any money at all.

The lessons of the Articles of Confederation are lost on Republican ideologues. The fact that weak centralized governments can’t hold together even the most basic of government servies (defense, currency, interstate disputes, etc) are completely outside the realm of consciousness for today’s conservatives.

The three people who have nailed this issue are Goldy, Frank, and — believe it or not — Mr. Cynical. (Chuck, as usual, is high on something.)

Yes, Goldy is right, the GOP needs to come clean about their real agenda. If they want to abolish government and turn everything in our society into for-profit business opportunities for … um, Republican business owners … they need to be honest with voters about this intention instead of trying to sneak it through the back door.

Yes, Frank is right, here in the “other Washington” the Democrats are in charge, so it is the Democrats who are in a position to fix our hopeless tax system — but our Democratic pols aren’t even talking about it. We need to light the fire under them. That’s our responsibility.

Yes, Cynical is right, incorporating a whole bunch of little wide spots in the highway to make the residents (all 400 of them) “feel good” about having “local control” doesn’t make much sense and is wasteful of precious resources.

Smoke has a point too. The car tab tax WAS a stinkin’ lousy tax. It hit ordinary non-rich people hard, and hit them in one big chunk. How many working-class, two-earner families can come up with $700 to $1500 cash all at once? The average joe had to take out a second mortgage to pay this tax. Too bad the legislature was so blind it took an ass like Tim Eyman to get rid of it. I tried evading it by driving a Democratmobile, and even though my tabs only cost $30 a year, the repair bills to keep the old wreck going were even more than the tax. So as soon as the lege repealed it, I ran to the nearest dealer and bought a new vehicle. The payments are actually less than what I was forking over to my mechanic. And the tabs are still only $30 thanks to our newly-enlightened lege. Now I evade the SMP car tab tax by, er … not living in Seattle. Ha! I finally have the best of both worlds! As for Gold Bar’s problem, well, I don’t live there so it’s not my problem, but we do need to support at least those municipal entities that Cynical is willing to sign off on, don’t we? Figuring this out isn’t rocket science. Every other state does it with property taxes.

You make some cogent points, and that is part of the debate we should be having. If the benefits of maintaining the governments of these small towns just aren’t worth the costs, then perhaps some should disincorporate for the sake of efficiency. That is a debate we need to have. Unfortunately, we’re not having the debate… instead, we’re just cutting taxes for the sake of cutting taxes, and oops… disincorporation is the consequence.

Would the citizens of Gold Bar have voted for 695, if it the ballot summary also included a statement that it would require disincorporation. I don’t think so?

So this is what I am arguing for… an honest debate. (And by the way Cynical, thanks for engaging in one.)

Middleroader@7– Good question….when is enough enough?? Several years ago, Arizona had over 250 School Districts that they consolidated down to less than 100. There was a lot of squealing…but things have worked out well. More dollars go to the kids…less to wasted, useless, unproductive bureaucracies.

Small towns and small county’s are the first place to start. If the voters want to support costly bureaucracy, I suggest consolidations be made easier Legislatively, get the facts out and allow each City/County make it’s own decision.

I made the comment about KingCo being split up because of huge philosophical differences in a very, very large county. Again, let’s have a public vote…let the voters decide.

The problem repeatedly is that the City/County Bureacrats sidetrack virtually all efforts to consolidate simple services like information technology, building depts., accounting etc.

School Districts are part of ESD’s (too many of them) resulting in an extraordinary # of non-certified teachers. We are one of only 3 states where there are more non-teachers employed than certified teachers. Something is very wrong.

if they don’t believe in mediocre public schools and a university system that can’t possibly grow to meet the needs our rising population… then

Goldy,

The news from Goldbar is good news for most republicans.

They don’t believe in publically funded schools.

They want private religious schools. They have no use for the state university system as evolution and other horribles are taught there.

Plus, as a side benefit, teachers and professors tend to vote liberal. Eliminating them is a bonus.

Small towns across the state will be forced to disincorporate as tax revenues continue to dry up

It appears the small town folks are going to have to feel the impacts of Eyman’s initiatives before they will stop voting for them. However, currently, I have no doubt that they would vote for yet another tax cutting initiative if given the chance.

What is your problem? Does the idea of Dems and Reps (even Cynical) participating in a thoughtful and hopefully productive thread give you Scanners-like head issues?

“…most republicans… don’t believe in publically funded schools. They want private religious schools. They have no use for the state university system as evolution and other horribles are taught there.”

No, I would venture that most Republicans simply want the public schools to spend money on actual teachers getting actual results. They want good teachers retained and rewarded. They want bad teachers either retrained or fired.

As for evolution and related subjects, I’d say that average Republicans are more concerned that evolution is presented as a hard, cold fact instead of the theory that it is. If kids are going to study other cultures in school, why can’t they at least be told (not even in detail) that there exist other ideas about how life came about? Why not cover that as a “unit” all to itself — evolution, Christian beliefs, old “mythologies,” and so on?

No, I would venture that most Republicans simply want the public schools to spend money on actual teachers getting actual results.

I disagree.

You must be a member of the mainstream republicans or something, a group which holds little power in the party in Washington. Those folks were taken out 20 years ago and are left to make a nominal appearance at the state conventions each year.

Religious conservatives control the republican party in Washington via Crawell, Carlson and Pat Robertson’s nomination.

Your analogy is about as bad as any I’ve seen in many years of studying the English language, but I think I understand what you are trying to say.

Mark @ 16

This is the wrong thread for a discussion of evolution and what the term “theory” means as used by scientists, but it might make for lively discussion in an open thread on an otherwise slow day.

Auto License Fees: It is interesting, and enlightening, to me to discover how hated was the auto excise tax. It was in place when I moved to Washington (I think so at least; memories, like muscles, deteriorate over time). I thought it mildly progressive, and, given that the state had no income tax, didn’t mind paying it. Apropos of nothing in particular, some states used to, and may still, set auto license fees according to the weight of the vehicle. SUV owners would pay more than the driver of a mini-compact, for example. The idea was that the heavier the vehicle, the more wear and tear it put on the roads. Trucks were licensed under a different system from passenger vehicles, but along the same principle.

The problem that folks don’t seem to want to address is what makes a city a city, a town a town and an unicorporated village just a name on a map. Should a city be a city for ever? Is it the proper role of government to prevent declining communities from becoming ghost towns?

Let’s look at Goldbar for a moment…..http://www.mrsc.org/cityprofil.....aspx?id=85 They have a population of about 2,075. So that means probaby less than a thousand households. Is that enough to support a “city” with “city-levels” of government services?

It is probably at the bottom end of a self sustaining “city” in size, if the city has a reasonable mix of tax base. Having visited Goldbar, I am not sure that Gold bar has a good mix of commercial and industrial property for its 2075 people.

Repealing I-695 should not become a rallying cry for trying to prevent ghost towns from happending when economic reasons don’t support a city’s existance.

“I have an idea, why dont the officials in Goldbar stop spending money like drunken sailors?”

As a former drunken sailor I take offense to that…we weren’t spending money, we were giving it away in return for a bad hangover the next day in order to prop up local economies. Oh, maybe you did make a good point…

RDC@20 Ill hand it to you, you are the first to uncover my secret that Im not a great literary expert. Actually Ill admit that I can slaughter the english language, but I still give it my best…(Ill make sure you get a signed copy of the book when it comes out)

Erik– The Republican’s are gonna freight-train you in the 2006 election. WHY?? Because you arrogantly believe that the WASHINGTON LEFTISTS (Party of HOWWWWWWARDDDDDDD DEEEEEEEEANNNNNNNNNNNNN) will stay in power forever no matter how poorly you perform. A $2.2 Billion Budget Deficit. A KingCo Traffic debacle. Businesses leaving. LEFTISTS attacking trade associations which represent tens of thousands of SMALL businesses. And last, but not least: “This election is a model for the rest of the nation and the world at large”> —–Christine Gregoire

Slightly off-topic post. I tire of people with apparently no science background trotting old the old chestnut of “Evolution is just a theory.” In the scientific community, theory is a term of art. It does not mean “we can’t prove it, so its just a theory.” There’s the “Theory of Gravity” and the “Theory of Relativity”, but we don’t say “Gee, we shouldn’t teach those in school, because they are just theories.” Evolution is taught because it is the single most credible explanation for what can be observed and is accepted by the relevant scientific community.

So the next time someone writes “Evolution is just a theory”, we should all recognize the writer is actually saying “I am scientifically illiterate. Now where did I leave my tinfoil hat?”

Goldy @ 12– Don’t try to schmooz me with the “cogent comments” accolade. ALL my comments are cogent… Some are just more cogent than others!!

Seriously– The ONLY way to eliminate excessive bureaucratic goo is to take away the money. I know that concept is impossible for the LEFTISTS here to grasp but as one who has tried to reason with bureaucrats….I can assure you that taking away the $$$ is the ONLY way to effect change. THE ONLY WAY!

This is why I voted for Eyman Initiatives. If we restore the money, watch. All ideas for more cost effective bureaucracy will evaporate.

Locke came up with this wonderful PRIORITIES OF GOVERNMENT approach. Yet he failed to first clearly identify what is practically absolutely necessary (public safety & infrastructure) and what is desired (recreation, health, social services etc.) and at what level of service. PRIORITIES! Not very politically correct to discuss IN DEPTH, is it? No matter what you trim, you WILL piss someone off. Need courageous leaders willing to take a stand. None on the horizon. Sadly. Locke has the right approach….just no balls to implement. The State Employees and Teachers Unions are powerful…no matter what Don says. The Washington State Labor Council is controlling the Legislature and Governor’s Office. Just watch their greed for power backfire on them….2006.

Cynical @ 14: Arizona consolidated 250 school districts to 100 school districts. That may have been a good thing. But one of the side effects of this is that it removed local control.

And that’s what this is ultimately about. The reason that Eastern King County wants to separate from Western King County is that they don’t want bean counters in Seattle deciding what they want to do with their land. The same thing is true about Gold Bar.

Gold Bar exists as a city because the residents of Gold Bar don’t want King County deciding if they can add an addition to their house, instead they want local control.

And that’s the consequence. You’re right: Gold Bar might not have the population needed to be sustainable from a local property tax standpoint. But does that mean that the residents of Gold Bar don’t have a right to decide their land use decisions?

And that the residents of the Arizona School Districts that were eliminated don’t have a right to have a say in how their kids are educated?

That’s what consolidation brings: Less local control, more big government bureaucracies.

Please identify the “excessive bureaucratic goo” so we can eliminate it. We Democrats have better uses for the limited supply of public money than wasting it on “excessive bureaucratic goo.” Post your written list here on HA and I’ll make sure Gregoire gets it.

And that’s the consequence. You’re right: Gold Bar might not have the population needed to be sustainable from a local property tax standpoint. But does that mean that the residents of Gold Bar don’t have a right to decide their land use decisions?>>>

No it doesnt mean that, what it means is that if the town of Gold Bar’s population wants to exercise that much control in their land use decisions then THEY should pay for that privlege (right?) and not expect the rest of the state to pick up the tab for it with outragous tab fees.

I thought you hated people who used ALL CAPS and such in order to shout a particular person down. Why the bold message?

Good question. I goofed. I only intended to bold the first sentence to differentiate it from the italics part.

To which “Washington” do you refer? If you mean the state, you’re right to a point about the lurch hard right

Yes. Rossi didn’t respond to most controversial social questions as he knew it wouldn’t sell in Washington. Was he a mainstream republican type? From what I have read he wasn’t, he only played down those aspects unlike Craswell who wore her beliefs on her sleeve.

Would he have governed differently? Hard to say as he almost certainly would never been presented with an bill to restrict abortion rights.

Please identify the “excessive bureaucratic goo” so we can eliminate it.>>>>

Streamline the legislative pay, a legislator should make no more than the salary average in the district they represent. When that happens the representatives will think like normal average people with normal average money.

And I’m tired of people with no understanding of grammar. Go look up the word “theory” in Webster’s.

“Evolution is taught because it is the single most credible explanation”

While it may be the most credible explanation to Western science, it is not an absolute fact. As for the other Theories you mention, note that the word THEORY is in the title to begin with. If you actually had some knowledge of science and history, you’d also know that many things that scientists believed turned out not to be so. Compare the older theories of classical physics to modern quantum theory.

There is ONLY one FACT: Cogito ergo sum

Don @ 29

Absolutely. As part of the “unit” that talks about evolution, Creation, etc. Absolutely!

Taking away money without articulating how the priorities of the state will change is disingenous at best, and can lead to larger problems in the worst case scenario. Either the goal is to lower the effective taxes (across the board or for certain segments of the population) or the goals of these endevors is to ensure the best service the state can provide. Simply lowering (or raising) revenue, does not address the larger problem.

Both parties need to seriously debate the priorities of the state and how to realize those priorities. Current rhetoric (on most issues) has the outcome on producing more rhetoric and symbolic fixes, but not real changes.

Perhaps the only way to achieve a real debate over the priorities of the state is to move to zero based budgeting. This way, at least, each agency must justify its continued operations to the elected reresentativies of the state.

>>Streamline the legislative pay, a legislator should make no more than the salary average in the district they represent. When that happens the representatives will think like normal average people with normal average money.<< Legislators are paid about $33-34 thousand a year. In a lot of districts, that well below the salary average of their citizens. They already do think like normal average people because the vast majority of them make normal average money. Try again.

[i]Streamline the legislative pay, a legislator should make no more than the salary average in the district they represent. When that happens the representatives will think like normal average people with normal average money.[/i]

Don’t know what happened to my first comment.

Legislators are paid approximately $33-34 thousand a year. In many districts, that’s well below the salary average of their citizens. Most representatives already think like normal average people because they’re making normal average money.

Very much like saying that the Democratic Party agenda is to abolish churches, promote pronography, legailze drugs, empty the prisons, raise taxes and disperse the Military.

Oh wait, that is what you propose, isn’t it?

Nope. But thanks for dodging the point.

The Republican Party and conservatives in general are, en masse, articulating a very dangerous agenda. That is, to make certain that government spends little or no money. It’s a fall back to the Articles of Confederation. And since you don’t bother to actually rebut my point..you either can’t or you won’t.

Incidentally, I personally have no problem with the legalization of drugs and the promotion of pornography for consenting adults. Why do you?

Whatever a politician makes in their elected position, I know they don’t seek election for the pay. Politics is interest driven. Groups vie for power and put up money so their candidate can occupy the position coveted by that party. Very simply, policy can be favorable for one group over another based on who is in (and who’s pocket one is in). Perhaps that analysis is cynicism, but can it be disputed?

We were discussing beurocratic goo that can be eliminated, by goo, I think money because goo costs money hence the legislative pay. While we are on the subject, the average should be based from the unemployed (for whatever reason) all the way to bill gates, not just from the lowest paid employee all the way up to bill gates. (The states figures start with the lowest employed)

Let’s take Texas, where I reside for now. The legislature is paid $5000 (Not sure if it is per session, or per year). One session is every two years, so I hope per session. $35 thousand a year in WA is ridiculous, knowing these “citizen legislators” hold down businesses and jobs of their own. One could argue the population size of Texas is disparate, but I can’t help look at a state I was stationed in:

During the course of my military service, I was in WA, CA and IL (longest to shortest time frame). CA has a “professional” legislature, paid obscene amounts for full time lawmaking (why would any state need full time lawmakers? Sounds like a painful process to me were I a taxpayer there). Last I heard it was $99K per year per lawmaker in order to do what Texas does on $5k per session. One could legitimately argue which state is more screwed up, but not on this disparity…

Well I will say an income tax has no chance in hell in this state of passing, since it would have to be voted in by the people of this state. Ron Sims found this out the hard way running on this in his Governor’s race! Maybe the state employees could take pay cuts like the rest of the people in this state. Maybe their Fat retirement plans could be substituted for 401k’s like the rest of the business in the state are doing. Maybe CG could quit signing anti business legislation and huge cost increasing bills into place and start some real cost cutting. Maybe we could start with cutting the fat pay that the top Monorail planners are getting!

Maybe their Fat retirement plans could be substituted for 401k’s like the rest of the business in the state are doing

Hmmm. Why do you think they get paid alot?

All state employee’s salaries are online for you to review and verify. The high paying jobs are certainly not the ones working for the state. Realtors and car salesmen with a high school degrees (or not) often get paid more than alot of state workers.

I’m afraid the idea of limiting legislator’s pay is foolishness at best. As noted they are part time. Most of their compensation comes from other work- they are lawyers or employees of large orginizations which want their view expressed. Lowering their pay will make it less likely an “average” individual will be one.

Absolutely correct. Especially for the professionals. State lawyers and engineers (two classes I’m familiar with) are below market. And you send those folks in to negotiate against private sector individuals better paid and better resourced.

Especially for the professionals. State lawyers and engineers (two classes I’m familiar with) are below market.

Yeah. Not very smart to try to bottom feed when you are hiring people to build bridges, litigate against tobacco companies, or hire university professors to teach the state of the art to future graduates.

k – I am familiar with state engineers and differ with your assessment. They are paid above market in the entry level years and below market in the latter years, considering salary only. Those who jump to consulting firms after 15 or 20 years then are near the top of the private market again. These assessments do not account for the state pension or benefits, which are both above market. It’s not a bad deal at all for an engineer to work for the state.

The problem I have with State engineers is that there are too many of them. This DOT performs many functions in-house that are hired out to the private sector in Idaho and other states.

Not entirely true. The best end up in well-paid management positions, just like in the private sector. Some of the rest leave. The best engineer I knew from the state DOT went to the Federal Highway Administration after 30 years with DOT.

The technical folks at Ecology who are not engineers are in a variety of professions, some of which do not have an excessive demand in the private sector. I know 3 geologists that went from private consulting firms to Ecology. They are still there.

“a private sector agency would likely add another 30 percent profit to the salary if it were outsourced so I doubt there would be much if any savings” ? ? ?

I’m not talking about the DOT using a temp agency, I’m talking about letting private companies do some of the tasks DOT does in-house. Here are 3: aerial photography, drilling soil test borings, and concrete/soil testing on construction sites. Contract it out. Reduce payroll and overhead.

I don’t begrudge legislators their pay. Those who are conscientious, which likely means most from both parties, earn their salaries. Excessive salaries are getting to be a problem in this country, but they are not going to elected officials at any level.

What does seem wasteful of time and money is the existance of a House and a Senate. Because of the one man, one vote ruling of the Supreme Court, state senates are different from the U.S. Senate, where a state like Wyoming gets to have far more influence than the population would entitle it to. In Washington, members of the Senate have larger districts than members of the House, but in many ways the representation there is redundant (in theory; because of the way districts are drawn, the expected redundancy is somewhat lessened). I’d like to see this alternative structure seriously studied and considered, but each side is likely so fearful it will lose some power that the idea will never get more than a few passing comments at a cocktail party.

Give me a break, I used to work with George Walk, a legislator, side by side. All the guy ever did was bitched about how hard he worked for his “constituants” (he was a bethel teacher). The guy was in reality the most lesiure man I ever ran into. All the time I was working as a custodian full time as well as holding a full time job as an automotive mechanic…Oh poor george!

That would be a huge start. Prevailing wage adds about 30 percent. Check out the “Project Labor Agreements” that come up on every big public works project like the 3rd runway, monorail, etc. These PLA’s bump the costs up unbelievably.

You ignore the fact that the hypothetical private firm that the work is outsourced to has other clients besides the DOT, thereby spreading out the overhead. When DOT does it in-house, the overhead is entirely on the taxpayer. In this case, the overhaed is payroll and “increasing cost of health benefits”.

DOT staffed up on federal dollars when I-90 was built, and they’ve been carrying that overhead ever since. Parts of what they do with their in-house staff could be done for less money by using private firms on an “as-needed” basis.

Mr Cynical@6. I had to look 10 times to be sure that was actually your name @ post 6. Gritting my teeth here goes. I have to agree with you… ALMOST; most good points. Tough times for small towns after rvenue sharing was dropped and many other windfalls, plus everything on the rise. Five years ago, it was well known and predicted that small towns and cities would go belly-up in the red. Goldbar was well known for it’s traffic control, passerbys learned real quick not to speed through Goldbar.

Mark@39. Quantrum physics also is what Depok Chopra teaches in all the books he has published, the theory of healing and controling human aging under the law of quantrum. Cool reading, many prescribe to this theory and are living proof that mind over matter works. It was Mary Baker Eddy who introduced the similar theory in a less attractive way too early on in society for it to be exceptable; after her death, her works live on, healing many the followers. Charles Heston’s Puppet-Master theory has it’s place also, healing many and changing lives for the better. Then there is the Joseph Smith’s Golden Tablets theory. The list is endless. Dr Phil has his own theory and saying, “How is it working for you.” So much for theory. An old book written by Bristol covers a lot of the mystery of life. The title is, “The Magic of Believing.

Chuckie DOES have a functioning brain cell! (But only one.) I agree; payers of state or county taxes shouldn’t be forced to subsidize “local control.” Gold Bar residents should pay for their toy train set themselves.

The starting point of state budgeting shouldn’t be zero, it should be a basic understanding of what the state spends, and on what. In our state, that understanding begins with education spending.

In most states, public schools are funded by local property taxes collected by local jurisdictions. This money doesn’t show up on the state government’s books.

Washington is different. The state collects school taxes and distributes the money to local schools, and these sums do appear on the state books. Nearly 44% of the total state budget, to be exact. ($11.4 billion of $26.135 billion.)

Zero sum budgeting is fine as a planning or accounting tool and should be used for those purposes, but in the real world that state budget planners and politicians must operate in, you can’t start out with an assumption of spending nothing on the state’s 1 million plus school children. A more realistic assumption is that we will spend even more on education than in the last budget cycle, because population and costs are increasing. The real task of executive and legislative budget writers is to figure out how to get the money needed by the schools.

Approximately 25% of the state’s revenue is federal funding. You don’t want to zero that out, either. Here, the game is to get as much as possible (or at least our state’s fair share) in order to minimize the tax burden on payers of state taxes. Why give this federal money to Texas, or New York, or Missouri?

Some state agencies are either revenue-generating or self-supporting. It’s fine to look for cost savings and efficiencies in these agencies, but the premise of zero-based budgeting doesn’t really apply here, because eliminating these agencies or cutting their spending won’t save the state money and likely will result in a loss of revenue.

When you get right down to it, there’s not a hell of a lot of discretionary spending in state government, and most of it is going to prisons, transportation, nursing care for the elderly, and social programs like child abuse prevention and facility inspection and licensing (including hospitals, nursing homes, group homes, and day cares). There’s still some welfare, food aid, and medical assistance for the poor left in the budget, and we all understand that righties think poor people are poor because they’re evil and lazy, but some of us don’t agree with further cuts in this area.

In the end, zero-based budgeting is a nice political gimmick and might be incrementally useful, but it won’t produce much savings and won’t make big chunks of taxes go away. The only thing that can do that is to close our public schools, shutter the prisons and release all the killers and rapists, and sell off the highways and roads to private enterprises who will charge tolls every time you leave your farm or driveway.

You usually hit the mark, Carla, but not this time. The neocon agenda is even more dangerous than you acknowledge. They’re not against government spending; they’ve increased it dramatically. They’re only against paying taxes, and are resorting to reckless borrowing to finance the use of government to establish a state religion, facilitate a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very rich, suppress dissent, and impose American hegemony on the entire world.

Being a legislator may be a part-time position, but it precludes holding another job because you have to attend legislative sessions full-time for several months of each year and attend committee meetings and attend to constituent business at intermittent and sometimes unpredictable intervals the rest of the year. What employer would put up with that? Most of our legislators are either self-employed, retired, or living on their legislative salary as their sole source of earned income.

If your boss said he could give you work only 8 months of the year, but you have to be on call year-round, you couldn’t readily work another job to supplement your income. Legislators are in the same boat.

If working for the state is so great why aren’t you working for the state? Maybe because where else can you get a job that requires a master’s degree, starts at $25,000 a year, and after a number of years pays about $40,000. And you pay for your own retirement, it’s taken out of your paycheck.

There is no 20 years and out in PERS 1. You could retire at age 65 if you worked at least 5 years, otherwise you had to work at least 25 years and be over age 55. You did not get the maximum pension benefit unless you had 30 years of service credit. In addition, eligibility for PERS 1 closed in 1977, and all state employees hired after that date are in PERS 2 or 3, which are less generous and have more stringent retirement requirements, I believe you have to be at least 62 years old to receive a pension benefit under either of those plans.

So you think our legislators should make $21,000 a year even though legislative duties prevent them from holding another job? We’ve already chased all the lawyers out of the legislature; let’s fill it up with college students and social security pensioners, is what you’re saying.

So Gold Bar is proving that you do get what you pay for or, more precisely, you don’t get what you don’t pay for. It is unreasonable to believe that if you vote for a tax cut, that that tax cut won’t or shouldn’t affect the services delivered to you. It points out the drawback of government by initiative. It’s real easy to say in an initiative, “Let’s cut taxes,” without considering how the money you just cut would have been used, but it is a lot harder to ask and answer “What services do we want government to provide for the common good and what is the fairest way to raise the money to fund those services?” through that process. Oddly enough, people realized that long ago and adopted a representative democracy form of government, to allow a legislature and an executive to look at the big picture and make those decisions for the good of society considered as a whole. Are those services delivered with perfect efficiency? Of course not, we’re dealing with human beings here. There is in reality a limit to how efficient any group of humans can be and still actually deliver the services we want. Are they delivered the way each of us would like them delivered? Of course not, they are delivered for the good of the whole, not to an individual’s liking (although individuals do benefit from them).

The fundamental question remains, “what services do we want?” not “how low can we make our taxes?” The New Deal was not inaugurated by a bunch of poor people. It was the brain child of a group of rich guys who knew thay had to help the rest of society if they wanted to keep the country together and to keep most of what they had. Each of us needs to come to grips with that reality now. Before you subscribe to the “Starve the Beast” school of economic thought, think about what services you want for yourself and for society. Maybe go live or visit or at least read about a few countries where government doesn’t deliver anything close to the services ours does. Decide if that’s how you would like yourself and your neighbors and your children to live. The neo-con economic philosophy and the baby version of it espoused by conservatives in this state appears to me to have disregarded the wisdom of “for the good of the whole” in favor of for the good of me. In the long run, their economic philosophy will be infinitely more expensive than the most inefficient of contemporary governments. Can you say, “Economic collapse?” Can you spell, “Revolution?” I knew you could.

So if you voted to cut the license tax, and didn’t ask your legislator to find a fairer way to replace that revenue, don’t complain when you no longer receive the services that you want.

Sorry for the mess, HA didn’t preserve my chart formatting. It’s easier to read if you use the link to go to the source document. You will need to download it and use Acrobat Reader to read it because it’s in pdf format.

Are you talking a unicameral legislature like Nebraska? I don’t know what to think of such a system, other than it would likely be more knee-jerk than a bicameral system… You would likely get things done quicker, but at what cost (poorly thought out legislation, and worse)? Groupthink happens in a single group…usually…

Looks like FTE’s grew by 10% from 93-95 to 03-05. You call this “much smaller” ?

I-90 staff peaked in the mid 80’s. DOT never downsized when the federal I-90 money dried up. They put a lot of them on the Mt St Helens highway (federally funded, finished around 91 or 92) and never let them go when it was done. We need some FTE stats back to mid-80’s.

“Recommendation 10: Implement new legislation to encourage and facilitate expanded use of privatization where appropriate. Specifically, the legislation should provide the Washington State Department of Transportation management with the flexibility to evaluate and select the most cost-effective resources to perform highway maintenance.” Do you know if this legislation was ever passed?

Yes, when I wrote the post I was trying to do two things at once and forgot to put in the label. Nebraska has this form of government, as do most cities and counties I am aware of. Most parliamentary systems also have de facto unicameral legislative bodies, but admittedly they are not precisely the same thing as would be in place here.

At the Federal level the Senate often slows down, or kills, legislation the House has pushed through quickly. But the rules in a unicameral body could strike a compromise in that regard. But not to worry; it will never happen here, for the reason I stated.

“I’d like to see this alternative structure seriously studied and considered, but each side is likely so fearful it will lose some power that the idea will never get more than a few passing comments at a cocktail party.”

I’ve never once advocated publicatizing private businesses, but since you appear to be asking me to defend public education, I’ll merely point out that no student of a Washington state college, community college, or vocational school ever found the doors padlocked or got screwed out of his tuition money.

Don@110 Just think, going by your standards, if the government owned all furniture stores then people wouldnt have to worry about the Smiths Home Furnishings bankrupsy and lose the furniture that they had paid for or made a deposit on…come to think of it if they owned the restrants we could eat at Kenny Rogers or Boston Markets…Oh what a life….

“Looks like FTE’s grew by 10% from 93-95 to 03-05. You call this ‘much smaller’ ?”

Dollars budgeted and FTEs both dropped from 93-95 to 95-97. Capital spending was 84% less in 01-03 than 93-95.

DOT’s total capital and operating expenditures grew 19% from 93-95 to 01-03 and FTEs grew 3.8% over the same period (not adjusted for inflation or population growth).

Washington’s population grew 16.4% from 1993 to 2003, and inflation was 41.3% for that period (based on the CPI-U for Seattle; the Bureau of Labor Statistics apparently does not collect state CPI statistics.)

Although DOT’s dollar budget grew from 1993 to 2003, to get real spending per capita, you must multiply the 1993 dollar figure by 16.4% to adjust for population growth and 41.3% to adjust for inflation as follows: $2.346 billion x 1.164 x 1.413 = $3.858 billion is the 2003 amount necessary to spend the same per person as in 1993. The actual budget for 2003 was $2.792 billion or 72% of the amount necessary to maintain the 1993 per capita spending level.

DOT did get a big boost in the 03-05 budget cycle to $3.829 billion but this was still less than needed to maintain per capita parity with 1993. FTEs grew a modest 3.7% from 01-03 to 03-05.

That’s very different from paying tuition then to a school that pockets your money then goes out of business. California students lose no credits if they stay in the California school. Transferring to another school is voluntary; having your tuition money go down a rathole because the school you enrolled goes bankrupt isn’t. You are also going to have the same problem with losing credits if you transfer from a private school to a public college.

No Don I am simply saying you entire policy is bankrupt. A woman moves from California to Washington in fear of her life (volantary according to you) from her violent ex husband…loses most of her credits….

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